Paper accepted for presentation at 2003 IEEE Bologna PowerTech Conference, June 23-.

26,Bologna, Italy

A Contingency Ranking Method for Voltage

Stability in Real Time Operation of Power
Systems
M6rio A. Albuquerque and Carlos A. Castro, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract- A contingency ranking procedure regarding voltage

stability to be used in a real time operation environment is
proposed in this paper. The procedure can be added to the
existing ranking pmcednres (for MW overloads and voltage
violations) with mild modificationsand s m a l l extra computational
effort. A performance index (PI) is computed for each
contingency. The PI is defined in terns of a brancb-based voltage
stability proximity index. Several simulations show that the most
critical contingencies can be identified correctly.
Index Terms- Contingency ranking, Performance index,
Voltage stability, Secnrity analysis, Power systems operation.

I. INTRODUCTION

T "

he operation and control of power systems in real time

require that a number of supervision functions be executed
in the Control Center. First of all, the current operating
condition of the system (commonly referred to as base case) is
obtained through state estimation from real time measurements
and data base information. Once the base case is known, the
security analysis function is carried out. It is well known that
security analysis is a very demanding task as far as
computational effort is concerned.
In case violations are detected for the base case, corrective
control actions should be enforced so as to eliminate them.
Afterwards, the impact of the ocurrence of contingencies
should be evaluated. This process, usually called contingency
analysis, aims to detecting post-contingency operational limits
violations. The usual limits taken into account are MW
overloads in transmission lines and transformers and bus over
or under voltages. In case post-contingency violations are
detected, preventive and/or corrective control strategies are
devised to guarantee acceptable post-contingency operating
conditions [l].

A conventional practice is to perform the analysis of a

contingency list containing all simple and the most probable
multiple contingencies. This analysis corresponds to solving a
load flow for each contingency, for obtaining the postcontingency operating state. The total number of contingency
cases to be analyzed is very large for real, interconnected
M. A. Albuquerque is with Furnas Centrais EICtricas, Brazil. He is currently
an operation engineer (email: marioaa@fumas.com.br).
C. A. Casu0 is with State University of Campinas, Brazil. He is currently an
associate professor (email: ccasm@ieee.org).

0-7803-7967-5/03/$17.00 02003 IEEE

power systems. Therefore, this procedure is infeasible in a real

time operation environment.
Some utilities cany out contingency analysis of a reduced list
of critical contingencies, which are defined based on the every
day experience in the system's operation. Some developed
methodologies for automatically defining this list. However,
these methodologies are complex, lack a clear physical
meaning and demand consideralile computational effort. The
idea is to define a general, simple, and efficient procedure to
defining those critical contingencies, so that they are never
missed even after unpredicted load variations or topology
changes, for example.

A very efficient and well-accepted way to improve the

computational efficiency of the contingency analysis function
consists of adding a contingency ranking and selection process
that preceeds the contingency evaluation itself [2]. Each
contingency of the list is first analyzed through a simpler
method. For example, performing one full iteration of the fast
decoupled load flow is a very well-accepted method [3]. Then,
contingencies are ranked according to a performance index
(PI), which is a scalar that reflects the severity degree of a
contingency and it is computed from approximate operating
states. The top most critical contingencies are then analyzed in
detail, by following the conventional approach.
The main objectives of this paper are twofold:

(a) include voltage stability considerations in the contingency

ranking process. This inclusion has already been reported
in the literature, as for example in [41. However, most
methodologies demand more than one load flow per
contingency, which is too time consuming for on-line
applications. In this paper a method is proposed so as to
fit as much as possible into the traditional contingency
selection process. The idea is to assure that considering
voltage stability aspects in the contingency selection
process would not result in a prohibitive increase in
computational effort.

(b) propose a PI able to detect the most critical contingencies

as far as voltage stability. Particularly, the idea is to detect
those contingencies that result in the smallest loading
margin capacities. In this paper the PI will be defined in
terms of branch-based voltage stability proximity indices.

11. CONTINGENCY RANKING FOR VOLTAGE STABILITl

The post-contingency operational violations usually taken into
account in contingency analysis are MW overloads in
transmission lines and transformers and bus over and under
voltages. However, voltage stability had become a very
important aspect of power systems analysis. The changes in
operating conditions due to load increasing and lack of
corresponding expansion in generation and transmission led
power systems to operate closer to their voltage stability limits.
Voltage instabilities and collapse occurs mainly in highly
loaded systems. It is usually associated to inadequate reactive
power support.
Fig. 1 shows a typical PV curve, which is recognized as an
important tool for helping voltage stability analysis. Consider
that a power system operates with a load demand and a voltage
magnitude of respectively P o and

vo.In

maximum load for stable operation is

P*

Rg.2. Example pawer system

The real power delivered to the load at the receiving end bus R
of the transmission line is

this case, the

and the loading

margin is hp . A small load increase beyond P leads the

system to experience voltage stability problems and even to
voltage collapse.

P, =-v,

cos q

z, 1+ (z, / z , y + 2(z, / Z , ) C O S ( 8 -

ZR

q ) z , (I)

It can be shown that the point of maximum power transfer

occurs for Z,

/ z , = 1.

Substituting this value in (I), one

gets

PO

Fig. I . PV curve and voltage stability limit.

The branch-based voltage stability proximity indicator

proposed in [6]is given by
This scenario justifies the need of adding voltage stability
aspects into the Contingency analysis function. Particularly,
detecting the critical contingencies as far as their impact on the
systems loading margin is of paramount importance. The
L,, =- P R
(3)
maximum loading point and consequently the loading margin
pcan he precisely computed by continuation methods [ 5 ] .
However, they demand intensive computational effort. The
challenge here is to develop a ranking criterion (a PI) that
A similar index can be obtained for reactive power. In this
reflects appropriately the post-contingency situation. It must be paper, a new apparent power-based index is proposed. The
simple, efficient from the computational standpoint, and idea is to consider both real and reactive power flows
present a clear physical meaning. On the other hand, the simultaneously. The apparent power flow is given by
voltage stability problem is very complex and results from a
strongly nonlinear behavior of the system. So there is a clear
trade-off between precision and efficiency to be overcome.
111.VOLTAGE STABILITY INDICES
Consider a load fed by a generator through a transmission line
as shown in Fig. 2.

IV. PROPOSED METHOD FOR CONTINGENCY RANKING

and the maximum power transfer is

(5)

The new voltage stability index is

(6)

The method proposed in this paper consists of ranking

contingencies according to a performance index that reflects
the post-contingency loading margin. Contingencies with large
PI present a small post-contingency loading margin, and are
considered severe from the voltage stability standpoint. A very
important constraint that has been imposed is that the
computation of PI for volta,se stability should require
approximately the same computational effort as the equivalent
computation for branch overloads and voltage magnitude
violations. The idea is to perform all three rankings using the
same framework.
The performance index for a certain contingency k is
computed as follows.

1. Perform one load flow iteration.

The indices given by (3) and (6) approach unity as the system
load approaches the maximum loading point. Fig. 3 shows an
example power system used to evaluate the behavior of the
voltage stability indicator.

Bus 1

0"s 6

units have reached their

2. In case one or more generation
respective reactive power generation limits, perform
another load flow iteration. In this case, generation buses
with violated generation lintits are treated as load buses,
as it is usually done in conventional load flow
calculations.

BUS 5

3. Compute the voltage stability proximity indices for all

branches according to (6).
4.

Compute the performance index for contingency k

according to

BUS 2

Rg.3. Six bus test system

Fig. 4 shows that the voltage stability index LsR for branch

6 increases as the load of bus 3 increases, approaching unity ai

the maximum loading point,

where

& and

Lc,are respectively the base case and post-

contingency indices for branch i.

k
L,,,,

is the largest index

after contingency k and nr comesponds to the number of

branches. PI takes into account the index variation from pre- to
post-contingency operating conditions. This variation is
,

....

ql

.....

multiplied by a weight

(&/L:,tm). The PI for a certain

branch will he small even if there is a large index variation,

provided that the index for this branch is sinall if compared to
the largest index.

O20

'
,

35

45

55

65

75

85

95

Real power at bus 3

Rg.4. Behavior of the voltage stability proximity indicator

105

The addition of step 2 was necwary since voltage stability

problems and reactive power support are tightly related.
Therefore, violations of reactive power generation limits
strongly influence the final result;. Performing step 2 results in
a computational time overhead. However, it will not he
performed for all contingencies. Actually, this step is
necessary for the most severe contingencies only. In practice,

most contingencies will be harmtess to the system operation

from the voltage stability standpoint. In average, less than two
load flow iterations per contingency are necessary for the
proposed method.

since more contingencies are selected for detailed analysis.

Taking the third column only, 10 contingencies had to undergo
detailed analysis. Taking both the third and four columns, this
number goes up to 14.

An additional attempt was made to increase the chances of

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method,

a capture ratio was defined as follows.

capturing the most severe contingencies. The idea was to

define a second performance index, which would result in
another ranking. Then both ranked lists from different
performance indices could be used to pick the top most severe
contingencies. The second PI was defined as

PI, = max(z:,)

(1) Define the number of critical contingencies (N) that are

supposed to be captured. These critical contingencies
were obtained by computing the post-contingency voltage
stability margins and ranking them in descending order of
margins.
(2) Define a number of positions (P) of the list of
contingencies ranked according to performance index.

V. SIMULATION RESULTS
The proposed method was tested for small test to large realistic
power systems and showed to be able to correctly identify the
most critical contingencies. Some simulation results are
included here to show some important characteristics of the
method.
Table 1 shows some results for the IEEE 30 bus system [71.
The first 10 most critical contingencies ranked according to
the proposed method are compared to the ones obtained by a
detailed analysis. The detailed analysis consists of obtaining
the post-contingency maximum loading point through
successive load flow solutions by increasing both load and
generation. Load power factors were kept constant.

(3) Obtain the number of contingencies out of the N critical

ones that appear in the P positions of the contingency list,
say K.
(4) Compute the capture ratio (K/N)

100%

Table I1 shows that the capture ratio for the IEEE 30 bus
system is very good, providing encouraging results.

TABLE U

cAPl"2 RATIOS FOR THE 30 BUS SYSTEM

TABLE I
CONTINGENCY RANKLNG FOR T EIEEE - 30 BUS SYSTEM

Tables I11 and IV show some results for a 904 bus, 1283
branch system corresponding to a reduced version of the
Southwest USA. Table I11 shows the rankings (expected and
obtained by the proposed method), while Table IV shows the
capture ratios.

TABLE Ul
RANKWGFOR THE 904 BUS SYSTEM

Observing the third column of Table I, one notes that 8 out of

the 10 most critical contingencies of the second column have
been correctly picked by PI according to (7). Contingencies 3
and 6 did not appear in the ranked list. However, they do
appear in the fourth column, which contains the ranked list
according to (8). In case both the third and founh columns are
taken into account, all 10 most critical contingencies are
identified.
The benefit of picking all most critical
contingencies implies in an additional computational cost,

TABLE Iv
CAFTLlrtE RATIOS FOR THE 904 BUS SYSIEM

VIII. BIOGRAPHIES
Mririo de ALmeida e Albuquerque was born in N i t d i , Brasil, on November
11,1956. He obtained the BS degree from the Federal University from Ria de
Janeiro in 1980. He is with Fumas Csntais El6uicas. Brazil, where he is
responsible for supervising the operation of part of the southeast area of the
brazilian power system. He is pursuing his MS degree at the State University
of Campinas (UNICAMP).

In the particular case of the 904 bus system, there were no

advantages in using the second PI.

VI. CONCLUSIONS
The objective of this paper was to propose a contingency
ranking procedure for selecting the most critical contingencies
for voltage stability. Additionally, the ranking process should
take the smallest extra computational effort possible with
respect to the current screeening practices (for MW overload
and voltage violation analyses). In other words, only one load
flow iteration should be computed for each contingency. This
constitutes an important constraint if compared to other
selection procedures proposed in the literature. Results have
shown that a second iteration is necessary in case of reactive
power generation limit violations at generation buses.
Therefore, the conventional contingency selection procedure
was preserved with mild modifications. The proposed
procedure requires in average less than two load flow
iterations per contingency. A very simple, easy to understand,
and easy to compute voltage stability proximity index was
used. This index was incorporated into a performance index
for ranking the contingencies. Results showed that the
proposed method can correctly identify the critical
contingencies for voltage stability.

VII. REFERENCES
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optimization, Proceedings of the IEEE, ~01.75,n.12, pp.1623-1644,
1987.

G.C. Ejebe and B.F. Berg, Automatic Contingency Selection, IEEE

Trans. on Power Apparofus and System, vol PAS-98, pp.97-109, 1979.

E Albuyeh, A. Bose, and B. Heath, Reactive power considerations in

automatic contingency selection, IEEE Transactions on Power
Apparolus ondSystem, vol.PAS-101, n.1, pp.lO7-ll2, 1982.

E. Vaahedi, C. Fuchs, W. Xu, Y. Mansour, H. Hamadaniradeh, and

G.K. Morison, Voltage stability contingency screening and ranking,
IEEE Transactions on Power System, ~01.14,n.1, pp.256-265. 1999.
V. Ajjarapu and C. Christy, The continuation power flow: a tml for
steady s t a l voltage stability analysis, IEEE Transactions on Power
Sysfem,vo1.7,n.2,pp.416-423. 1992.
Moghavvemi. M and F. M.Omar, A Line Outage Study for Prediction
of Static Voltage Collapse, IEEE Power Engineering Review, 1998.
L.L. Freris and A.M. Sasson, Investigation of the load-flaw problem,
Proceedingsofthe IEE, ~01.115.n.lO, pp.1459-1470, 1968.

Carlos A. Castro (S1990, M1994, !;M2000)obtained his BS and MS

degrees from UNICAMP in 1982 and 1985, respectively. He also obtained the
PhD degree from Arizona State University, USA, in 1993. He is currently an
associateprofessorat~ICAMP.